Christine Snowden of Gladstone, Manitoba knits because she loves it, and Christine’s Hand Knits has become a Sunflower Fine Arts and Craft Market fixture as she brings her hand knit creations to the city each year.
Traditional aran-style sweaters and cardigans are what Snowden makes, and a style that originated in Ireland. It has been something she has loved to do for sixty years.
“My grandmother taught me to knit when I was seven, and I thank her every day.”
As someone who says she can’t sit still and do nothing, she finds knitting to be a therapeutic endeavour. She brings all of her yarn from England, and says that doing the craft sales is a way to keep doing a hobby that she loves.
“A lot of people laugh at me but I can relax knitting, and the more complicated a pattern is the better I can relax.”
While knitting for sixty years, Snowden has been going to craft shows for the past twenty or so. She says that she enjoys events like Sunflower because it’s a chance to meet people.
“The friends you make at a place like this, it’s unbelievable really.”
Making high quality sweaters is a way to get people back year after year, and she says her business is built on people who come back, bring their friends, and encourage others to look at her sweaters.
“It just snowballs and snowballs, you get people coming by, and then the next year they bring friends by, and two or three years after that they buy for themselves again.”
While she began with just sweaters, Snowden says that each year you need to do something a bit different. For that reason, she’s gone into scarves and mittens, and then went into baby sweaters as well.
She also has a personal reason to get into the children’s sweaters. Snowden has 21 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, so family always has a chance to stay warm in the winter.
“Everything I have left goes to Christmas presents.”
It was a good weekend for Snowden, though she admits that the warm weekend makes it a challenge to sell warm sweaters. She says she doesn’t expect to do much more than cover costs, but she enjoys getting out and meeting people at the shows, and since she knits so much it makes sense to sell it.
“My fingers keep going. As long as they keep going, I’ll keep knitting.”
